Colden Parva

The village of Little Cowden is recorded in the Domesday Book as being one of the smallest populated places in the Domesday record.{{cite web |title=[Little] Cowden {{!}} Domesday Book |url=https://opendomesday.org/place/TA2442/little-cowden/ |website=opendomesday.org |access-date=30 August 2023}} The village of Little Cowden is listed as having seven houses in 1401, and was being occupied until 1517, when it was largely deserted.{{sfn|Fletcher|2002|p=310}} Church records show that 24 persons were evicted on the orders of St Mary's Abbey in York.{{cite book |last1=Beresford |first1=Maurice Warwick |title=The lost villages of England |date=1963 |orig-date=1954 |publisher=Lutterworth Press |location=London|oclc=1194441244|page=304}} Although some farmsteads continued in the area, most of the land in the parish and village had been lost to coastal erosion.{{cite web |title=Little Cowden |url=https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=81805&resourceID=19191 |website=heritagegateway.org.uk |access-date=30 August 2023}} The village is recorded as being "swept away by the sea" in 1690, but the church had been lost as early as 1627.{{cite book |last1=Sheppard |first1=Thomas |title=The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast |date=1912 |publisher=Brown & Sons |location=Hull|oclc=613711266|page=162}} The area became the property of the Ros family, then the le Despenser family, and finally the Wentworths.{{sfn|Fletcher|2002|p=312}}

Little Cowden/Colden Parva was listed as a village as it had a church dedicated to St John the Evangelist.{{cite book |last1=Whellan |first1=T. |title=History and topography of the City of York and the Ainsty wapentake and the East Riding of Yorkshire |date=1856 |publisher=Sheahan & Whellan |location=Beverley |page=425|oclc=23461588}} The presence of the church and the link in religious terms to the ecclesiastical parish of Aldbrough, meant that the name of the village was still listed in the 1970s. The York Diocesan Yearbook for 1975 has an entry for "Aldbrough, St Bartholomew, with Colden Parva, St John the Evangelist (now in the sea)."{{cite news |title=Wardens of a church which doesn't exist |work=Hull Daily Mail |issue=27,822 |date=21 April 1975 |page=6|issn=1741-3419}} As a few acres of the parish still existed on dry land, churchwardens were still being elected to the defunct church in the 1970s due to an act dating back to the 13th century.{{cite news |last=Russel| first=Stuart|title=Owthorne and the final tragedy, and the last days of Colden Parva |work=Hull Daily Mail |issue=27,909 |date=31 July 1975 |page=8|issn=1741-3419}}

Parts of the old parish were still extant in the 19th and 20th centuries, with the ecclesiastical parish covering an area of {{convert|728|acre}} in 1852, however, the loss rate of land due to coastal erosion was listed as being {{convert|3.8|yard}} a year.{{sfn|Fletcher|2002|p=306}}{{cite book |last1=Reid |first1=Clement |title=The Geology of Holderness, and the Adjoining Parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire |date=1885 |publisher=HMSO |location=London |page=96}} What remained of Colden Parva in 1892 was two farms under its other name of Little Cowden.{{cite web |title=Genuki: Mappleton Parish information from Bulmers' 1892., Yorkshire (East Riding) |url=https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ERY/Mappleton/Mappleton92 |website=genuki.org.uk |access-date=30 August 2023}}

Most of what was left of Colden Parva/Little Cowden had been washed away by 2009.{{cite web |title=Rapid coastal zone assessment survey; Bempton to Donna Nook phase 2 part 2 |url=https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7443/RCZASYorkshireandLincolnshire_BemptontoDonnaNookPhase2Part2aGazetteers |website=historicengland.org.uk |access-date=1 September 2023 |page=105}}

The Royal Air Force operated a {{convert|600|acre|adj=on}} bombing range on the beach at RAF Cowden between 1959 and 1998. The range was closed due to coastal erosion, which is quite common on the East Riding coast.{{cite news |last1=Burkeman |first1=Oliver |title=Erosion tips RAF shells on to beach |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/sep/01/oliverburkeman |access-date=5 February 2021 |work=The Guardian |date=1 September 2000}}{{cite journal |last1=Pye |first1=K. |last2=Blott |first2=S. J. |title=Spatial and temporal variations in soft-cliff erosion along the Holderness coast, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK |journal=Journal of Coastal Conservation |date=December 2015 |volume=19 |issue=6 |pages=785–808 |doi=10.1007/s11852-015-0378-8|s2cid=128996067 }} The erosion regularly reveals buried ordnance. In February 2021, Brimstone Site Investigation was awarded a £1.5 million contract to clear the ordnance from the site over a four-year period. The contract was the first of its kind awarded to a civilian company by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).{{cite web |title=Contract awarded to clear unexploded ordnance from Mappleton Beach |url=https://www.gov.uk/government/news/contract-awarded-to-clear-uxo-from-mappleton-beach |access-date=27 June 2023 |website=GOV.UK }}

The local HM Coastguard team at Hornsea frequently attend reports of ordnance in the first instance and send the details to the Humber Coastguard Operations Centre and EOD ops centre to decide on the appropriate means of disposal. All ordnance found on the coast should be reported to the Coastguard by dialling 999.

No. 5131(BD) Squadron used to deploy from RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire to make the old bombs safe but were disbanded in 2019 with the British Army and Royal Navy EOD teams continuing to operate nationally.{{cite news|title=The beach where it's not safe to pick up the shells|work=The Yorkshire Post|date=26 July 2012|url=https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/beach-where-its-not-safe-pick-shells-1894770|accessdate=4 March 2020}}{{cite news|last1=Townend|first1=Jon|title=BLOWN AWAY: E YORKS: Bombs and rockets made safe on old beach target range|work=Hull Daily Mail|date=26 July 2012|page=18|issn=1741-3419}}{{cite news|last1=Burkeman|first1=Oliver|title=National Roundup: Erosion tips RAF shells on to beach|work=The Guardian|date=1 September 2000|page=8|issn=0261-3077}}

• Ravenser Odd
• Ravenspurn

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |editor1-last=Fletcher |editor1-first=A. J. |title=A history of the county of York, East Riding. 7: Holderness Wapentake: Middle and North divisions |date=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0-19-722797-X}}
• {{cite book|title=Gazetteer — A–Z of Towns Villages and Hamlets|year=2006|publisher=East Riding of Yorkshire Council|page=4}}

• [https://urbanrim.org.uk/Great-Colden-note.htm A note on Colden Parva]
• {{OpenDomesday|OS=TA2442|name=little-cowden|display=Cowden}}

Category:Coastal erosion in the United Kingdom

Category:Holderness

Category:Lost villages and towns of the East Riding of Yorkshire